An Article by Mark Goodacre

This article first appeared in Scripture Bulletin 27/2
(July 1997), pp. 66-77. It is reproduced here with permission.

1. A New Era

Critical study of the New Testament is in the process of radical
transformation. Talk of postmodernism, paradigm-shifts and new
approaches fills the air. As many of the old certainties
disappear, a new generation of scholars is studying the New
Testament armed with different agendas, fresh perspectives and
innovative methods. It is now most unlikely that any Biblical
Studies student could emerge from the British University system
without having encountered in some form new disciplines like
reader-response, narrative or rhetorical criticism, feminist
hermeneutics or liberation perspectives.

A fundamental shift has taken place over the last thirty years
or so (from the later 1960s), with a marked intensification over
the last ten years or so (the 1990s). What has happened is a
breakdown in confidence in some (not all) quarters in what has
become known as the historical-critical approach. Gone now is
the assumption that studying the New Testament necessarily
involves historical-critical methods.(1)Until recently, books on reading or interpreting
the New Testament dealt with questions that were in some measure
historical. Most obviously, the three dominant critical tools
in Gospel study this century, source-, form- and redaction-
criticism, though applied with varying results and different
goals, are all, essentially, historical methods.

But if 'reading the New Testament', even as recently as a decade
ago,(2) was about mastering such disciplines, it is now
about much
more. A recent compilation of 'strategies for interpreting' the
New Testament features not only the familiar historical-critical
material but also essays on such topics as discourse analysis,
genre analysis, narrative criticism, rhetorical criticism, global
perspectives and feminist hermeneutics.(3) Any sleeping beauty who
had happened to miss as little as ten years of critical study of
the Bible would wake up now to a changed landscape.

2. Variety

The arrival of fresh perspectives is a symptom, of course, of a
change in the wider culture, a shift in the intellectual climate
that has become suspicious of 'modernity', with which
historical-critical methods are associated. As Anthony Thiselton
coherently states:

'A hermeneutic of suspicion now seeks to dethrone
all monolithic claims to represent a scientific
"value-neutral" stance outside or above history, and
it calls for the breakup of such hitherto respected
institutional traditions of modernity into a new
pluralism that reflects differing community
interests.'(4)

Thus, the most characteristic feature of
post-modernism in
Biblical Studies, as in the outside world, is its lack of any
characteristic feature. The only kind of one-word designation
that could be used to describe the contemporary scene is
'pluralism'. The variety of both approaches and topics of New
Testament study is staggering. To look at the list of the most
recent SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) International
Meeting Abstracts, for example, is to see subjects sometimes so
distantly related that it is amazing that they manage to be
housed under the same roof. Alongside old favourites like the
Synoptic Problem, the Son of Man debate, or the authenticity (or
otherwise) of Paul's epistles, one finds reference to topics
ranging from gender issues in Corinth to Jesus as a Comedic Hero
to the lyrics of Frank Zappa.(5)

it is surely no coincidence that some of the most
valued student textbooks in recent years have focused not so
much on introducing New Testament thought, or providing an
outline of its theology, as if unifying structures are easy to
find, but rather on the variety or diversity among the New
Testament documents themselves,(6)only struggling to discover
some underlying unifying feature. An extreme symptom of the
same trend might be seen in two books that attempt to revive an
older notion and drive enormous wedges between Pauline and
non-Pauline strands in early Christianity, Michael Goulder's
Tale of
Two Missions(7)and
Gerd Lüdemann's Heretics.(8)

Further, the variety is increased by the
moving of boundaries
traditionally imposed on scholarship by the canon of the New
Testament. There is an increased interest in extra-canonical
material, generated particularly by an increased utilization of
texts from Nag Hammadi. These texts have been making an impact
on scholarship for a while - they were discovered in Egypt in
1945 - but the tendency for a long time was to attempt to fit
them into the existing paradigms of New Testament research,
finding ways, for example, to make the Gospel of Thomas
buttress the problematic 'Q' hypothesis and so provide fresh
evidence on the sayings of the historical Jesus. Now, however,
there is a greater interest in these writings for their own
sake, as texts in their own right, with their own history and
their own ideas.(9)

Most markedly, though, the new scene is about new strategies for
interpreting the New Testament. The one that is perhaps most
discussed in academic circles now is the highly controversial
reader-response criticism.(10)This self-explanatory approach is
controversial because it explicitly focuses attention not, as
traditionally, on the (historical) author of a text but rather
on its (contemporary) readers. Not surprisingly, this agenda
generates such enormously varying readings of Biblical texts
that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to define
precisely how it works as a critical method.(11)Those interested
would perhaps find it most useful simply to watch reader-
response in action.(12)

The suspicion with which this kind of
approach is often viewed
is a consequence largely of its youth. Only time will tell
whether it can survive its adolescence(13)and move on into
maturity. At present there are both prospects and anxieties.
One of the promising elements is the scope it provides for
rapprochement between the academy and the Church, for in
eschewing history and stressing the contemporary reader,
reader-response criticism lends itself much more readily for use
in Bible-Study groups, sermons and the like.

This same feature might in another way cause anxiety, however,
for there is a danger that university students might receive
(however unfairly) the message that one reading is as good as
another, and that this is a good excuse not to read any
secondary literature. Likewise, the teaching of New Testament
Greek might also seem to be threatened by those who think that
texts in translation are adequate in themselves for reader-
response work. In a world in which there is constant concern
about the possibility of falling standards, some already feel
that a slump into uninformed mediocrity might be the result of
pushing students towards reader-response.

4. Jesus Research

Many are currently inclined simply to suspend judgement on newer
methods like reader-response, in the mean time attempting to
make progress in whatever historical-critical area they are
working. The difficulty, though, with this common perspective
is that it often appears more hostile to newer criticisms than
it intends to be. Thus while there are some who consciously
entrench themselves in traditional techniques and perspectives
out of disdain for the new methods, there are many others who
are simply biding their time for a season.

For such scholars, those who want to wait a while, there is
plenty of fresh historical-critical interest around. One of the
most enjoyable areas of research remains the quest of the
historical Jesus. Since its revival in the 1950s, the quest has
had so many changes, twists and fresh developments that it is
beginning to defy categorisation.(14)For those unfamiliar with
recent developments, one might draw attention specifically to
three important areas - the work of E. P. Sanders, the work of
'the Jesus Seminar' and the recent book by Tom Wright.(15)

E. P. Sanders is the greatest living New
Testament scholar. Not
only has he ushered in a revolution in the study of Paul,(16)but also he has changed
the course of Jesus research, partly because
he pays proper attention to questions of method and partly
because he reads Jewish sources carefully and sympathetically
and worthy of study in their own right, and not simply as 'New
Testament background'.(17)His most important conclusions are
that there is a retrievable bedrock of historical data which,
when properly contextualised, will show Jesus to have been a
'Jewish restoration prophet' involved in a controversial
incident in the Temple which led to his arrest, trial and death.
The encouraging news for those unfamiliar with Sanders's work is
that he writes with clarity and force, and has recently
published a popular, non-'scholarly' book on Jesus,(18)which should be
compulsory
reading for all.

A figure of importance emerging in this country (Sanders is
based in the U.S.A.) is Tom Wright. Wright, in the second
volume of a five volume project on Christian Origins and the
Question of God,(19)has attempted to take up Sanders's mantle and
write about a very Jewish Jesus, but he develops his ideas in a
much more conservative direction and regards most of the Gospel
material as dependable for historical reconstruction of the
ministry of Jesus. Wright pictures a Jesus who announced the
end of exile and its attendant forgiveness of sins, who
consciously brought Israel's story to its climax in himself,
willingly going to an insurgent's cross to fulfil the plan of
Israel's god. The jury is still out on Wright's enormous
thesis, but although many will no doubt find both the grand
sweep and the conservative tendencies rather difficult to
swallow, some of the initial signs are promising for Wright.(20)

The now notorious Jesus Seminar, on the
other hand, is rarely
charged with being too conservative, though ironically some of
its work does have a somewhat old-fashioned feel. Convened by
Robert Funk in 1985, it is a group of North American scholars
whose 'on-going project has been to evaluate the historical
significance of every shred of evidence about Jesus from
antiquity'.(21)It has
attracted much media attention in the
United States, and some in Europe too, and has been the victim
of many barbed comments both from scholars and members of the
public.

Most often criticised is the seminar's system of 'voting' on
Jesus material, and the resultant 'red letter' editions of the
Gospels, delineating in different colours degrees of likely
authenticity of Jesus' sayings.(22)While it might seem easy,
however, to mock such a method, it is easy to miss the point
that the celebrated voting scheme is only the end product of
discussion, debate and, most importantly, democracy. At the
very least the seminar is, in this respect, a useful experiment.
More worrying is the stress that is placed in its premises(23)on
matters that are far from consensus among New Testament
scholars, matters like the early dating for the Gospel of
Thomas, or the dubious stratification of the already
hypothetical 'Q' document. It seems to many that there is a
danger of having pre-judged the results of discussions by
settling on some rather debatable premises.

5. Integration or Anarchy?

There is, then, plenty for those still interested in historical
methods to get excited about. Yet there are signs that even in
Jesus research, newer approaches and post-modern outlooks will
soon be making their presence felt. A recent book by William
Hamilton attempted a quest for what its author called the 'post-
historical' Jesus(24)and
another, C. J. den Heyer's Jesus Matters
paused from its historical-critical study for a chapter to
reflect on 'New Pictures of Jesus', looking at the
sensationalist literature (Jesus in India, Japan, etc.) and
Jesus in fiction and film.(25)

It is striking to note, however, that den
Heyer regards this
chapter as an 'unscientific intermezzo' and not as part of the
argument proper. The challenge for future Jesus research, one
might suggest, is to attempt to integrate the insights that can
be gained from such so-called 'unscientific' material with those
that have already been gained using historical methods. Indeed,
there are signs that this kind of integrated approach is
beginning to develop in other areas.

There is much talk at the moment, for example, about another new
method, but this time a method that has the potential to draw
together some of the diversified strands in New Testament
criticism. Its name is Wirkungsgeschichte and it might be
defined as the technique of analysing the history of a text's
influences and effects. The person most responsible for pushing
this way of reading texts is the Swiss scholar Ulrich Luz.
While writing his fine three-volume commentary on the Gospel of
Matthew, Luz says that he consistently found greater inspiration
in the attempt to understand Matthew by going to Luther, Calvin
and the like, than he did when he delved into the morass of
historical-critical works of scholarship of the last century or
so. His point is that the study of a text's reception history,
as well as being interesting and informative in its own right,
can also shed some useful light on the origins of a document.(26)

Wirkungsgeschichte is, then, an
exciting development because of
its potential to draw together insights from different forms of
scholarship, reminding us simultaneously that a text has a
history, a history that begins after it has left the hands of
its author. So much attention has been focused on hypothetical
reconstructions of events leading up to the writing of New
Testament texts, that many have simply forgotten to consider the
much more concrete and varied ways that the texts have been
handled. Wirkungsgeschichte is inevitably a historical
discipline, but its interest in readers and readings of texts is
likely ultimately to prove congenial to reader-response
criticism. It might even help to function as a useful control
on some of the perceived excesses of some reader-response work.

Perhaps too Wirkungsgeschichte will prove conducive to any
development of interest in the contemporary cultural
appropriation of New Testament texts. There are signs that
interest in analysing the Bible in culture are developing.
There is a new journal called Biblicon which deals,
broadly,
with this theme and there is undoubtedly a developing interest
in the New Testament in film and fiction.(27)However, at present
Hebrew Bible scholars are ahead of their New Testament
colleagues and there is nothing on the New Testament to parallel
J. Cheryl Exum's recent Plotted, Shot and Painted: Cultural
Representations of Biblical Women.(28)

If, though, Wirkungsgeschichte and
the study of the Bible
in
culture generally might be helpful means of preventing the
academic study of the Bible from sliding into anarchy,(29)another approach is
already integrating traditional methods by
interacting with them in the light of its own agenda. The
development of feminist hermeneutics for interpreting the New
Testament is almost certainly the most important recent
development in Biblical study, and some of the feminist
literature is among the most exciting work currently going on.
The reader unfamiliar with feminist study of the Bible might
usefully begin with the two volumes edited by Elisabeth
Schüssler Fiorenza, Searching the Scriptures,(30)in which
feminist perspectives interact with, and often transform, the
traditional means of doing Biblical exegesis.

The great challenge for the future, then, is the question of
integrating different approaches in an attempt to prevent the
discipline of New Testament Studies falling apart. Already
studies by feminist scholars are demonstrating how different
methods can be held together under one controlling agenda.
Likewise, Wirkungsgeschichte and cultural studies offer
means by
which interaction can take place between historical-critical and
non historical-critical ways of reading the New Testament.

6. Changing the Forum

Whatever the future course of New Testament studies, though, one
thing seems certain about the next millennium - the forum for
doing New Testament teaching and research will increasingly
involve computers and the internet. Computer software packages
are making technical, linguistic study of the New Testament a
great deal easier and, more importantly, the world wide web is
set to revolutionise the communication and publication of
Biblical research.

Already, an electronic journal on text criticism has been
established(31)and there
are electronic conferences on Biblical
Greek,(32)the Historical
Jesus(33)and the Acts of
the Apostles.(34)Such Email discussion groups are at present
in their early
stages, and the quality of the material contributed inevitably
varies in quality, but the scope for quick and easy
communication all round the world, for English-speakers at
least, is generating some worthwhile exchanges. It is
uncertain, however, how major a part these will play in the
future. As more scholars and more students 'come
online', it is possible that the electronic conferences will
become drastically over-subscribed.

Under such circumstances, there will be more of a future for
those scholars who publish their ideas by means of creating
their own web-pages. At present there is actually relatively
little on the academic study of the New Testament to be found on
the world wide web,(35)and given increased student access to the
internet, there is a market that is wide-open and waiting to be
exploited.

7. Concluding Thoughts - the Synoptic Problem

Those who have read the foregoing with a close eye will perceive
that I write from the perspective of one immersed in the
historical-critical methods of New Testament research and that
the current approaches I find most congenial are those that
cohere happily with the standard perspective. My own research
focuses primarily the most fascinating literary puzzle of all
time, the Synoptic Problem, a puzzle that has a special interest
for those who, like me, are convinced that the standard solution
is partly wrong.

But studying the Synoptic Problem in the late 1990s encourages
all sorts of troubling questions: of what relevance is it to
those interested in reader-response criticism? What does it
have to offer to those who focus on the cultural appropriation
of the Biblical text? Is it not the last bastion of an
antiquated enterprise, with nothing to offer to those using
newer methods?

Increasingly, synoptic scholars are getting asked these
questions and it is easy to see why, for much synoptic study
appears to be utterly entrenched in traditional ways of doing
things. 'The International Q Project', for example, like its
distant relation the Jesus Seminar (see
above), shows all the
marks of a modernity untouched by the methods of this
generation. Not only does the project take the existence of the
hypothetical Q for granted, but its members believe that they
have the ability to reconstruct its text in painstaking
detail.(36)

Yet the questions asked above could well
turn out to be less
rhetorical than their authors intend. For while it is certainly
true that as traditionally defined, the Synoptic Problem has
very little to offer to those interested in contemporary
approaches, there is no reason that this should remain the
status quo. It is worth noting, for example, that in spite of
the proliferation of narrative-critical, reader-response and
literary-critical readings of each of our Gospels, at present
there is nothing that attempts to appropriate the insights
gained from such approaches to parallel texts in synopsis. This
is a weakness of the current scene, in which scholars have
become so besotted with responding to texts in isolation from
one another, that they have forgotten that the texts have, and
have always been perceived as having, an intimate
interrelationship.

So there are possibilities for new directions even in apparently
antiquated areas of study like the Synoptic Problem. Will
scholars follow up such possibilities or will post-modern fads
fizzle out and leave us alone to get on with good, old-fashioned
historical work? Almost certainly, the answer to this is that
there is far too much staked in the new methodologies for them
to die. The paradigm has already shifted and
historical-critical work cannot reign supreme again. As surely
as the
computer is already transforming the forum for debate, so too
fresh approaches will continue to re-define the discipline. The
challenge for the scholars of the future is, then, to train both
themselves and their students in a study of the New Testament
that draws from its store both new and old.

Notes

1. I have deliberately avoided talking about
'the historical-critical method' for there is really no such
thing. Scholars use many different historical-critical methods,
all of which might fall under the general designation
historical-critical approach or perspective. (Back)

2. Cf. C. M. Tuckett, Reading the New
Testament:
Methods of
Interpretation (London: SPCK, 1987). This book's 'methods of
interpretation' are largely those characteristic of historical-
critical enquiry, form-criticism, redaction-criticism and the
like.(Back)

3. Joel B. Green, ed., Hearing the New
Testament:
Strategies for
Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Carlisle:
Paternoster,
1995). This book is the best available introduction to many of
the newer methodologies, with interesting essays also on some of
the older ones.(Back)

6. Two recent examples - John Reumann,
Variety and Unity in New
Testament Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and
James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament
(2nd
edition, London: SCM, 1990).(Back)

7. Michael Goulder, A Tale of Two Missions
(London: SCM, 1994).
For an evaluation, see my Goulder and the Gospels: An
Examination of a New Paradigm (JSNTSup, 133; Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), pp. 33-37.(Back)

8. Gerd Lüdemann, Heretics: The Other
Side of
Early Christianity
(ET, London: SCM, 1996). For
a recent evaluation, see the review by Frances Young, RRT
(1997/1), pp. 27-29.(Back)

9. For a recent example of this, see Majella
Franzmann, Jesus in
the Nag Hammadi Writings
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), which groups together and
discusses the writings' constructions of
Jesus' character, without necessary reference to canonical Gospel
material.(Back)

10. For a good introduction, see Stephen D.
Moore, Literary
Criticism and the Gospels: The
Theoretical Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989).(Back)

12. For a good starting point, see the
references contained in
ibid., pp. 318-24. For strident criticism
of this and other contemporary approaches, see John Ashton,
Studying John (Oxford: Clarendon,
1994), especially the last chapter.(Back)

13. John Ashton, ibid., suggests that
current
strategies like
narrative criticism will not survive beyond
the turn of the millennium.(Back)

14. See the attempt by N. T. Wright in Stephen
C. Neill and N.
T. Wright, The Interpretation of the
New Testament, 1861-1986 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988)
to categorise the history of Jesus
research into three distinct quests, already compromised in
Wright's own more recent Jesus and the
Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996), especially pp. 78-82.(Back)

15. For a good current introduction to Jesus
research, see C. J.
den Heyer, Jesus Matters: 150 Years
of Research (ET; London: SCM, 1996), reviewed by me in RRT
February 1997/1, pp. 77-8.(Back)

16. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A
Comparison of
Patterns of Religion (London: SCM,
1977) overturned the older Lutheran readings which placed
'justification by faith' at the heart of Paul's
thought. He replaced them with a reading sympathetic to Judaism,
a reading that has 'participation
in Christ' at the heart of Paul's theology.(Back)

17. Indeed Sanders is also a respected scholar
on Judaism of the
second Temple period. See most
recently his Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE - 66 CE
(London: SCM, 1992).(Back)

18.The Historical Figure of Jesus
(London:
Penguin, 1993). The
earlier, more documented book is
Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM, 1985). Somewhere between
the two
is Studying the Synoptic
Gospels (London: SCM, 1989), the last part of which is
devoted to
Jesus research.(Back)

19. The first volume is The New Testament
and
the People of God
(London: SPCK, 1992). For the
second volume, Jesus and the Victory of God, see note 14 above.(Back)

29. For Anthony Thiselton, 'the risk of anarchy'
brought about by
'according privilege to iconoclasm
and pluralism' is one of the big concerns about the recent
paradigm shift ('New Testament
Interpretation', p. 36).(Back)